DRUG CZAR SAYS WAR ON TERROR HELPS STEM DRUG TRADE

The security increase to guard against terrorism at the nation's ports has translated into better drug interdiction efforts, the U.S. drug czar said Friday.

"People were concerned after 9/11 that turning to terror was going to undermine what we do on drugs. In fact, what's happened is we've gotten more efficient in terms of seizures; we have strengthened crucial parts of the border," said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Walters took a 40-minute helicopter tour of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel on Friday after a briefing from local and federal law enforcement officials on security measures at the world's sixth-largest port, seeing firsthand the parade of ships headed in and out from the Gulf of Mexico, the concentration of petrochemical plants lining the shore and the unloading of cargo ships.

"The scale is quite large. There is vast trade, vast business infrastructure here and a lot of people are living in proximity" of the port, Walters told The Associated Press. "All of them and all of us are acutely aware that the threats both from drugs and terror are ones that we have to be ever vigilant about."

While some trafficking occurs through the nation's ports, the major gateway for smugglers to get drugs into the country remains the U.S.-Mexico border, he said.

But people should realize that drug smugglers aren't using ports because local, state and federal officials are effectively patrolling and protecting them, Walters said.

"Obviously when you look at a port like this, the threat used to be what (drugs are) coming in," he said. "Now it's also a threat for not only what's coming in but attacks on crucial infrastructure facilities from people who may be smuggled in or who may be recruited to come and attack it from the outside."

The port, part of the 50-mile-long Houston Ship Channel that connects Houston to the Gulf of Mexico, is home to the busiest container facility on the Gulf Coast, more than 400 petrochemical plants and two of the nation's largest oil refineries. Tankers comprise about half of the 40 vessels coming through Houston on a typical day.

U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby, among those who briefed Walters, said terrorism and the drug trade now are often closely linked. He cited the arrests in Houston in 2002 of several men who allegedly plotted to exchange drugs for $25 million worth of weapons that ultimately would have been delivered to a Colombian terrorist group.

"When we redouble our efforts to disrupt cocaine trafficking and the money that goes along with that, that has a direct effect on their ability to terrorize an entire nation and to possibly topple a government," he said.

"It's not an either or, that we either do drugs or we do terror," Walters added. "We increasingly see these threats as cooperative enterprises that can begin to work more closely together. Our job is to make that cooperation more difficult and to disrupt it to the maximum extent possible."